Between 1896 and 1907, the Oxford Egyptologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt spent six seasons digging the low, sandy mounds surrounding the village of el-Behnesa, a hundred miles south of Cairo and ten miles west of the Nile. In concentrating on the ancient town of Oxyrhynchos (literally, 'city of the sharp-nosed fish'), they were not aiming to uncover another set of impressive ruins that could rival those of Leptis Magna, Ephesus or Pompeii. Their interest lay in Oxyrhynchos garbage dumps, where the dry Egyptian climate had preserved thousands of scraps of papyrus mixed up with earth and other refuse.

LRB 21 February 2008 | PDF Download